圣犹达儿童研究医院研究组近日取得一项新成果。经过不懈努力，他们揭示了Spotiphy使单细胞空间全转录组学跨越整个剖面。2025年3月12日出版的《自然—方法学》杂志发表了这项成果。

在这里，研究团队提出Spotiphy（带有伪单细胞分辨率组织学的斑点成像仪），这是一个计算工具包，可将基于测序的ST数据转换为单细胞分辨率的全转录组图像。Spotiphy在广泛的基准评估中提供最精确的细胞比例。Spotiphy衍生的推断单细胞谱揭示了阿尔茨海默病和健康无主心病大脑中星形胶质细胞和疾病相关的小胶质细胞区域特征。Spotiphy识别了人类乳腺ST数据中肿瘤-肿瘤微环境相互作用的多个空间域和改变。Spotiphy弥合了信息鸿沟，实现了整个剖面的细胞定位和转录组图谱的可视化，为探索复杂的生物系统提供了高信息量的输出和创新的空间分析管道。

据介绍，空间转录组学（ST）通过在整个组织切片中实现基因表达的可视化，提高了他们对组织区域的理解，但目前的方法仍然受到在不牺牲全基因组覆盖的情况下实现单细胞分辨率的挑战的困扰。

附：英文原文

Title: Spotiphy enables single-cell spatial whole transcriptomics across an entire section

Author: Yang, Jiyuan, Zheng, Ziqian, Jiao, Yun, Yu, Kaiwen, Bhatara, Sheetal, Yang, Xu, Natarajan, Sivaraman, Zhang, Jiahui, Pan, Qingfei, Easton, John, Yan, Koon-Kiu, Peng, Junmin, Liu, Kaibo, Yu, Jiyang

Issue&Volume: 2025-03-12

Abstract: Spatial transcriptomics (ST) has advanced our understanding of tissue regionalization by enabling the visualization of gene expression within whole-tissue sections, but current approaches remain plagued by the challenge of achieving single-cell resolution without sacrificing whole-genome coverage. Here we present Spotiphy (spot imager with pseudo-single-cell-resolution histology), a computational toolkit that transforms sequencing-based ST data into single-cell-resolved whole-transcriptome images. Spotiphy delivers the most precise cellular proportions in extensive benchmarking evaluations. Spotiphy-derived inferred single-cell profiles reveal astrocyte and disease-associated microglia regional specifications in Alzheimer’s disease and healthy mouse brains. Spotiphy identifies multiple spatial domains and alterations in tumor–tumor microenvironment interactions in human breast ST data. Spotiphy bridges the information gap and enables visualization of cell localization and transcriptomic profiles throughout entire sections, offering highly informative outputs and an innovative spatial analysis pipeline for exploring complex biological systems.

DOI: 10.1038/s41592-025-02622-5

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-025-02622-5